cloudy days

It was a little over a year ago that I was sitting on Heather’s couch watching the clock’s hand move from double digits to single digits. We had returned to her home that evening from our two-day trek across the dessert and desolate wasteland that separates St. Louis from Southern New Mexico. My cousin and her husband along with the four girls were sleeping upstairs while I waited to be reunited with my husband. I divided my solitude intermittently between inhaling paragraph’s of Carolyn Custis James’ Lost Women of the Bible and exhaling long gazes at this painting that hung between the two windows that would announce Nate’s arrival.

Earlier that year, Heather had played Doula for her dear neighbor. The husband painted Heather this picture to thank her for her role in ushering in the life of their first child.

To some it may appear odd that they would chose a painting of a coming storm to commemorate the birth of a new baby girl.

The longer I gazed at this painting the more it appeared to be an allegory of childbirth. The first spasms that send their spidery fingers across a women’s belly are the dark clouds on the horizon hinting at the turbulence to come. The winds blow harder and harder moving the darkness closer. The body responds in fits and shudders, contractions growing stronger with each flex. Soon the spasms are rolling one top of the other like a whipping wind leaving the woman breathless and afraid.

And when it seems as though the darkness is swallowing the world, the storm breaks open pouring out it’s furry, pushing down flashes of fierce light and screaming out peals of thunder. The ground is soaked; the limbs are ravished.

Then there in the storm’s wake is a new sky, a new babe, drenched from the storm, but completely new. The sun peaks through the haze shining its rays on the bright, unseen skin. And as bright beams of colors cast their prism across the sky the now-distant storm fades away into the horizon. It dissipates until the awful memory is merely the frame the surrounds the light of the new birth.

The more I stared at painting the more it appeared to be in motion. The clouds were rolling, rolling towards me. Cerulean and cobalt. Graphite and grey. The melancholic hues were tumbling beyond the frameless borders until I could smell the haze in my nostrils.

That night I knew there was a storm rumbling within me, but I didn’t know what it was. The pains that I had felt peeling across my abdomen were growing in intensity, but I was ignorant to their cause. And here it was in front of me. The ominous clouds weighted with sorrow, shrouding the sun. And a white cloud, light with promise, kicking out its feet.

In the morning the dreaded clouds broke over my head. Drops of red would signal the first signs of an ectopic pregnancy. In the week to follow, we would learn the hard and holy details that give us cause to say, “Three in heaven, one on earth.”

Many days in the past year, I have closed my eyes and seen this image. The dark clouds rolling, coming with an unstoppable force. There is no shelter in the picture. There is no place to hide. There is no Savior holding out his mighty hands and declaring, “Storm be still.” The storm is coming. It is going to hit.

The storm did come. And I got very, very wet. Drenched in fact.

And while the darkness was severe, it was not consuming. Because there was a Savior holding my hand saying, “See those white clouds peaking out? See the band of blue on the horizon? That’s from me. I am the Light, walk with me.”

A very wise woman prayed for me several months earlier when we heard that our second child’s heart would stop beating. She prayed, “Lord let her hope be in you, not in doctors or medicine or this baby or future babies, but in you. Let her hope be in you and you alone.”

With that prayer she tethered me to a rock that that would not be swept away in the storm. The rains came down and the floods came up, but I was tied to a rock that stood firm.

Being bound to a rock kept me from drowning, but it didn’t keep me dry. I felt the wind upon my face and my skin soaked in the rain. These storms in our lives are powerfully painful and it is easy to confuse this pain with defeat. It is easy to close our eyes in the darkness and fail to see the flickers of light.

But there is hope beyond these shadows. This painting is redemptive. Like childbirth, on the other side of these contractions is life.

For me, it is an impenetrable union with Jesus and a faith that cries, “You, Christ, are my rock. I was not washed away.”

I know that that this is not the last storm in my life. And I know that as I write this there are many who find themselves drenched in a downpour and others who see cloudy days on the horizon.

Even now I stand on the edges and pray as the dark clouds gather ominously over my friend’s womb, where her baby’s heart beats too rapidly. I pray as the showers pour down on my young cousin whose organs have been devastated by E Coli. I pray that they would be healed, that they would comforted, that they would be filled with peace, but most of all I pray that their hope would in Christ.

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation….Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is out refuge. Selah

I have been feeling melancholy today as I reflect on my recent loss and face appointments that had to be canceled…questions about the future…sadness…emptiness. It was fitting that God would have me read this today — a reminder that He really is the calmer of the storm, and that beauty can be found even in the darkest, windiest days.

And I hope you are doing OK today, too, as you hit this one-year benchmark. Even though there is hope, this kind of loss is difficult to commemorate. Bless you!

This is beautiful. Sorry it took a few days for me to find it. I love the painting and wish I could see it in person. You’ve described the stormy and hopeful aspects of it in such a powerful way. I’ve been meaning to write about clouds for a long time–about how much I love studying them, about what the painter John Constable said about their capacity to reflect human passions, etc. But I haven’t found the right moment yet. I hope I don’t have to survive a storm such as you describe here to get around to it.